Big Bang Theory: The Stephen King Confluence
by Thor2000
Summary: Penny gets her first major acting job in a low-budget horror movie; but she can't get ready for it because the guys won't keep their hands off if it. This story is Post-Season 2/Pre-Amy.
1. Chapter 1

His hair was brushed, his suit pressed and his slacks were fresh from the plastic wrapped around them in the store. Brushing and checking his hair over and over, Leonard realized this was the night that could make or break his relationship with the hot blonde from across the hall. Her name was Penny Parker, a struggling actress from Omaha, Nebraska with long legs, cascading blonde hair, the body of a young Christina Applegate and two big blue doll-like eyes. She also had a voice that was out of pitch, a bad temper and an innocent habit of mooching food off the guys, but Leonard could forgive all that if but she offered to be the first Mrs. Leonard Hofstadter and the mother of his children, but right now, she wanted a career. She wanted to be popular. She wanted her name on movie posters and guys everywhere worshipping the ground she walked on. Leonard was already there. He was fresh from his horrible three-month sojourn from Antarctica, clean-shaven and ready to jump head first into the lake known as "In A Relationship." He appeared at Penny's door nervous, insecure and nervous of what was about to happen next.

He knocked at her door. Lifting his right foot to scratch the back of his left leg, Leonard was on both feet as Penny opened the door in her red dress. They were having dinner in her apartment tonight, but he was mostly looking forward to their post-dinner coital relationship.

"Hey, Leonard…" She shined toward him. "Come on in…"

"Thanks…" Leonard strolled in as she closed the door behind him. "Sorry, I'm late…"

"Uh, what?" She looked to him.

"You said be here at seven…" Leonard checked his watch. "It's 7:03."

"Yes…" She realized once again his pattern for accuracy. "That it is…" She gave him a nice kiss to the cheek at the door and stepped back to pick up her tops, underwear and a shoe from the sofa for him to sit. Looking around her apartment, Leonard glanced around the dishes in her sink, the smattering of magazines and mail on her table and then the photos of her family and friends on the wall.

"You cleaned up a little." He noticed.

"Yeah…" Penny answered. "Well, sometimes, I just can't stand looking at it." She placed the bread and cups on her table then turned back for the plates of food.

"Dinner smells good."

"Yeah," Penny was a good judge of her cooking. "Well, I just heated up three TV dinners and then merged them together on two plates." She set the table. Leonard looked at what she had. Three servings of turkey and dressing split between the two of them, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables were set on plastic plates for the two of them. It may not have been fine dining, but it was dinner, and getting to spend it with Penny was the best part. She gestured to him to sit down and poured him wine from a carton purchased from the market.

"So…" Penny sat across from him and looked at him interestedly. "How was Antarctica?" She had heard about the guys placating Sheldon's experiment that lead to his embarrassment at Cal Tech, and she heard the details about the night the power went out, but there had to be more than that.

"Well…" Leonard thought back. "It was cold, miserable, and Sheldon was an ass." He paused. "Correction: he was the biggest ass in the capitol of a country of asses."

"What did he do?" Penny dipped her bread in the gravy on her dinner.

"What does he ever do?" Leonard sipped his wine. "He acted like Sheldon." He placed his glass back down. "Another month, and we would have left him trapped in ice and made him a problem for future generations." He salted his peas and carrots. "What about here? Did anything happen here?"

"Not much…" Penny looked up to him. "Miss Forbisher's cat caught a opossum in the basement…" She paused. "At least I think it's a opossum, I'd hate to think a rat could get that big."

Leonard was looking up at her over his turkey and dressing.

"Mr. Tuttle's son got mugged outside the building."

"That's horrible!"

"For the crook…" Penny added. "His son is a seven foot tall Marine drill sergeant." She stirred her vegetables into her mashed potatoes. "It was like watching a 747 land on top of this tiny stick man."

Leonard re-sipped his wine.

"Oh, yeah…" Penny continued. "Mr. Forbisher from upstairs was finally put into a home."

"Well, we all saw that coming." Leonard felt a pang of reluctant joy. "The last time I saw him he was laying landing lights on the roof for the aliens to come."

"Hey," Penny shook her fork at Leonard. "I'm the one who had to complain when he went down to get his mail in just his belt and socks!"

Leonard reacted confused. "What kept his belt…"

"Don't ask…" Penny made a reluctant horrifying face of grossed-out displeasure. "I'm still trying to get that image out of my head." She wasn't sure she could eat anymore after having that image return to her memory. It was only a few weeks before Leonard and the guys came home, but it was still seared into the fabric of her mind's tapestry of images. "He's gone. Someone else is living up there now."

"What's he like?"

"I don't know yet."

"Well, whatever you do, don't tell…" They both heard the door of the outside apartment open and close, followed by a very short sequence of footsteps and a very sudden and quick frenzy of knocking at Penny's door.

"Leonard and Penny?" The rapping continued. "Leonard and Penny?" More rapping followed. "Leonard and Penny?"

"Damn his Vulcan ears…" Leonard sighed disgustedly and rose to answer the door for his new girlfriend. "I should have left him in the ice." He mumbled as he left his dinner and strolled over to answer the door. "What?" He tried to sound as annoyed and inconvenienced as possible as the Boy Blunder ruined what should have been yet another nice night for him.

"What do you mean Mr. Forbisher is gone?" Sheldon Cooper queried. He might have been one of the biggest brains at Cal Tech, but he also had one of the biggest egos and the least social skills in the institution if not the world. Every morning Leonard had rooming with him across the hall started with him planning the perfect way to rid the world of Sheldon. Garbed in his red Flash t-shirt, Sheldon's misshaped head with that thin haircut perched atop his long neck made him look like a crazy cock-eyed and paranoid insect listening to noises that didn't exist. "He wasn't crazy. He was just as normal as I am."

"You can say that again…" Leonard knew that sentence could be construed another way.

"Sheldon, sweetie…" Penny sighed and approached him. "Mr. Forbisher was senile. He was practically swimming in Lake Alzheimers."

"But he was my friend…" Sheldon reflected on his memories of the retired science teacher. "He said hello to me, he listened to my discussions…"

"He didn't listen to you." Leonard pointed out. "He thought you were an android and was examining your voice for signs of alien transmissions from space!"

Sheldon seemed to simulate signs of forlorn emotion for someone who seemed to respect him.

"He's gone." Sheldon reacted dismissive a second then turned his head to Penny's ceiling. His eyes rolling, his ears perched, he was listening for details from their new tenant. "What about this new person? Penny, quick, what do you know about them?"

"It's a guy."

"Think, woman!" He confronted her. "Do you see them bringing in any sort of percussion or clog-dancing paraphernalia?"

"I don't know." Penny rolled her eyes already tired of dealing with the eccentric world of Sheldon Cooper. "I didn't see anything."

"Did you ask any questions at all?" Sheldon never did understand that no one thought the way he did. "Did you make any effort to interview him? Don't you care that we might have a gypsy or an undesirable person living among us?"

"I'm looking at one now!" Leonard glared at this nut with which he shared an apartment.

"Sheldon, look…" Penny fought the urge to react to her base instinct and pull Sheldon's bottom lip up over his head. "He's been living here three weeks, and I have not heard a peep from him, and besides, I'm the one living under him, not you."

"Well…" Sheldon looked to her ceiling, back at her then up again. "I might be able to tolerate your inability to screen anyone entering the building, but you will wish you had when we're being barraged by loud music at night while all sorts of strange people are stomping up and down our stairs." He turned out. "Come on, Leonard…"

"Come on, what?" Leonard reacted confused.

"It's comic book night!"

"I'm having dinner with Penny!"

"But it's comic book night."

"Penny invited me to have dinner with her." Leonard reminded him. "I told you about it this morning."

"Oh, all right…" Sheldon re-entered the apartment from the hall and closed the door behind him. "What are we having?" He strolled over and looked at the two plates. "Turkey on Chinese Food night? Good Lord! Well, let's speed through this so we can get to the comic book store…"


	2. Chapter 2

2

It took Sheldon twelve minutes to realize that it was meant to be a dinner date for two than a dinner party for three. For someone who thought he was so smart, he really did come off as incredibly dense. Once he was gone to join Raj and Howard at the comic book store, it took Penny and Leonard a while to get back to their romantic dinner, and even then, neither of then was much in the mood to celebrate their relationship. After watching a movie together, they separated for their apartments at just past midnight. Penny redressed to her shorts and a loose top for bed then slid under the sheets of her bed to get some sleep. Closing her eyes and turning to her side, she tried to daydream herself into a world where she lived in a big house, rode in limos and attended big celebrity parties with fans clamoring for her autograph. Halfway to meeting Brad Pitt and Hugh Jackman, her huge mansion started creaking and she woke up.

Scowling, she checked her clock… one-twenty-five. She'd barely been in bed an hour. She closed her eyes and tried again.

The creaking wasn't in her dream; it was from over her head.

Confused and tired, she tried again, but this time, the wheels of a desk chair played the upstairs floorboards like a xylophone. What was going on here? Did Sheldon jinx her? This could not be happening. Why was this guy up now? Penny placed her head to her pillow and closed her eyes. A deep gasp, she started drifting off again, but she was barely in her limo again until the chair upstairs sounded again. The floorboards sang their song again joined by a chorus of footsteps dancing the upstairs apartment away like fingers on a guitar. There was a thump, a creak and a groan and then Penny's feet hit the floor and she marched out of her bedroom, through her living room and toward her front door, grabbing and pulling on her robe during her journey. Another tired and disgusted gasp from her lungs and she marched upstairs ready to twist someone's head off their shoulders. Her right arms raised and strongly pounded the door at 5B at the base of the stairs to the roof. Another creaking noise from within and footsteps scraped across the floor inside before the lock twitched open.

"Yes?…" A guy with a round head, beard stubble and long dark brown hair looked out.

"Do you realize it is after one in the morning?" The blonde beauty from 4B glared at him.

"What?"

"The noise! The noise!" It was so hard to be gracious at night when you were tired. "Your bedroom is right over mine! All I'm hearing is –" She mimicked the weird noises bothering her through her ceiling: the squeaking, the creaking, the groan of the floor boards and the loud thunk of something hitting the floor, finishing it up with a dirty look.

"I'm sorry." Jason answered. "We're shooting this script in two weeks and I'm trying to get…"

"I don't give a rat's ass!" Penny hissed frustratedly. "If you don't stop the racket, I'm coming up with a baseball bat next and quite frankly, I'm the last person in this building you want to get angry!"

"Sorry…" Jason apologized and closed his door on her.

"You better be sorry!" Penny rolled her eyes tiredly. "Ass!" She hissed out of violated hostility and turned round disgustedly for the stairs. Her robe flailing a bit, her feet in her furry slippers tramping down to her apartment like a wild alien beast, her attractive features scowled into an angry and annoyed grimace hostile enough to chew nails out of the building. From her pouting lips, a volley of swear words and incoherent rambling issued from her lips.

"Lousy stinking…" She censored some of her own words as she staggered down the stairs in search of sleep. "Stupid idiot… Like I give a rat's ass about a script he's got to start shooting…"

The struggling actress persona in her head was screaming at her in the echoes of her unconscious mind. She stopped on the bottom landing outside her apartment and made a face of intense realization once her anger had abated and the facts finally hit her higher brain functions.

"Wait a second, I do give a damn." Imbued with a new determined second wind of preservation, she suddenly turned around with flurried haste and recharged up the stairs in haste. She vaulted over the middle landing, spun on her heel on the top landing and slid back upon the door of Apartment 5B. She started knocking again only this time kinder and more hospitably with her face relaxed and her eyes lit up with promise. A second more and Jason opened the door again. She heard him unlock the door and poke his head out toward her.

"You've got to be kidding me…" He looked at her confused and annoyed to see her again. "All I was doing was pouring a glass of milk!"

"No, this isn't about the noise." Penny lightly grinned and hopefully cleared her throat. "Uh, did you say you were working on a script?" She shined like a struggling actress with a big secret. Jason just leaned out and looked around the hallway thinking he was he was on a hidden camera show; his perplexed brown eyes rolling left and right wondering what was what happening.

"Yeah…"

"Hi, I'm Penny." Penny reached to shake his hand sweetly. "I live right under you. I'm an actress… well, a struggling actress."

Slowly shaking the fingertips of her right hand as he shook her hand, Jason slowly began realizing what was going on here.

"I was wondering…." Penny continued. "Does your script have any roles in it for an attractive, promising and talented young actress?" She beamed hopefully like a little girl looking in a Christmas display on the last day of November.

"Look…" Jason sighed and responded tiredly. "I really don't have anything to do with that stuff. It's not even my script. I was just hired to punch it up and add a few lines and a few more scenes."

"Just a small part? A cameo? An extra? Anything?" Her desperate heart was pleading her hopes and dreams to him.

"I'm sorry. I can't help you." He slowly started closing his door.

"Please?" Her voice shrinking to a tiny little pitch and her eyes he watched her future shrinking with the opening in his doorway. "I've been out here over three years and I've barely got anything. Just give me a chance. Anything? Please – please – please – please – please – please – please…" Maybe it was the sound of desperation in her voice or that last please because just before his door could slip back into the frame, Jason opened it again and stood there again in his blue jeans, socks and white undershirt.

"Come in…" He waved her inside his fifth floor apartment. It was laid out almost exactly like her own on the fourth floor with the kitchen on the far end, a large window over the fast food restaurant next door and the tiny bedroom and bath behind the main stairs of the building. His furniture was extreme second-hand, an old sofa, a stained coffee table covered with magazines and two chairs with an old partially damaged TV cabinet and a small cable box perched precariously on a twenty-inch TV. Covering the walls were photos of family and friends in photo and achievements. Her eyes glanced over only a few; they were dedicated "Second Place Writing Contest," "Young Writers Award," "Most Talented Writer – 2005 – Jason Danvers" and "Third Prize Science Fiction Award." There were also a few autographed pictures too from Nicolas Cage, Hugh Jackman and Michael Chiklis. Up top front and center, Kate Winslet had signed her color image, "Thanks for the laughs, Kate." Penny felt a small smile looking at his wall-to-wall mementos. Maybe someday she'd have a reason to give him a photo of herself. Jason reemerged from his bedroom.

"Here's a phone number for Marcy Walker, the assistant to the casting director…" He handed her a post-it with a number on it. "Best time to call her is between two and four when she's winding down after lunch. She's always got three to four projects going at one time and she's always looking for fresh new faces."

"Thank you so much!" Penny shined again and briefly hugged Jason out of gratitude. He just tiredly looked around searching for his glass of milk. It was on the counter in his center kitchen. Picking it up and sipping from it, he escorted Penny back out the door. She was grinning contently and lightly grinning under breath.

"Good night."

"Good night." Jason closed his door behind her and spun around after relocking and latching it. Through the door he heard a loud "Yes!" and the sound of someone jumping up and down in ecstasy. He looked back to the door a moment then looked around the room.

"If I had a nickel for every crazy struggling actress who pounded at my door in the middle of the night…" He hit the light switch in the room to turn off the light then wandered toward his bedroom with a yawn escaping his open lips.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Penny's mind had been on her big chance all day. She told both Bernadette and Margie about it at the Cheesecake Factory, and while dreaming about making her first movie, she raced home at three-thirty to get home in time before the allotted four o'clock to phone the assistant casting director. Leonard and Sheldon were coming out of their apartment with Howard and Raj to go see a movie as they heard the clamoring in the stairwell and then noticed Penny racing to get in her apartment.

"Hi guys…" She raced past. "Bye, guys…" She pulled her keys out and unlocked her door hurriedly, cursing and swearing as the door wouldn't open fast enough. Raj whispered a question to Howard he was unable to say in front of Penny.

"No, I don't think PMS causes that…" Howard mumbled back. They watched as Penny tossed her purse aside, flung the door behind her closed then grabbed the phone number off her refrigerator and began dialing it on her cell phone. In her haste, her door failed to close completely and swayed open enough for the guys led by Leonard wandering in through her doorway to watch her frenzied act of haste. Listening for a dial tone, Penny placed her hand to her chest and tried to stop breathing hard to appear and sound professional.

"Hello…" A voice answered.

"Mrs. Walker?" Penny lit up and gave an ecstatic thumb up to Leonard. "Hi! My name is Penny Parker, and I got your name from…"

"Glen Connelly?" Marcy guessed.

"No…"

"Fred Shapiro?"

"No…"

"Jason Danvers?"

"Yes…" Penny reacted confused and looked back over to the guys.

"It figures…" A slender and attractive brunette with rich azure colored eyes, Marcy had just finally sat down to eat her lunch after three hours of going through child actors between the ages of five to eight for the next Chad Dylan Cooper movie. "…And you're a struggling actress who just desperately needs that big break."

"Yeah…" Penny mouthed a surprised "Wow" into Leonard's direction. She thought she was the only desperate actress in Pasadena.

"I wish they'd stop giving my number to every depressed actress begging for a job." Marcy pulled her usual file for just such this case. Munching on her chef salad with her phone pressed to her ear, she took a pen to add Penny's name to a list. "Okay, I've got no open auditions right now, but I do need as many extras I can get to fill the Marshall Playhouse for an episode of "NCIS" this Friday at eight in the morning, and just in case you don't get in that, the following Monday at seven in the morning, I need more extras for a party at the Spenser Mansion on Highway 110. Make either location, I'll add you to my list."

"An extra?" Penny's heart sank.

"Sweetheart…" Marcy put her pen down and moved her pen to her other ear. "Taking parts as an extra is the bread and butter for struggling actors… You make friends, acquire contacts, develop a reputation, it takes time. Didn't your manager tell you that?"

"No…" Penny sighed. "I'll be there." She looked to the guys again. "Thank you…" She hung up and looked up dejectedly. She wasn't smiling. "I'm an extra." She announced.

"An extra what?" Sheldon asked.

"An extra person!" Leonard clarified for Penny than tried to be there for her by sitting by her.

"Well, that's not bad, is it?" Howard spoke up. "I mean, you're in the business, you're doing what you want to do. It's a step in the right direction, isn't it?"

"Howard's right…" Leonard smiled for Penny. "And who knows, maybe you'll meet someone there who needs you for their next movie."

"Does it really work like that?" Sheldon asked.

"I have no idea."

"No, you're right…" Penny's spirit lifted. "I mean… I'm starting out as an extra, but maybe, just maybe, I could replace someone else. People break their legs and get fired all the time!" She started standing and grinning. "I mean… I could be making a movie by next month!"

"Does it really work like that?" Sheldon asked Howard.

"I have no idea." Howard confessed.

"I'm going to be on TV!" Penny was glowing as stepped back and turned around on her heel. "I could just be a face in the background or right in the scene behind the actors, or like Leonard said, get a chance to do something else, but yes, this could be my shot!"

Raj whispered in Leonard's ear.

"How do I know if it works like that? I'm not an actor!" Leonard told him.

"I've got to call and tell my mom!" Penny was dialing another number. "Thanks, guys!"

"I may not be an actor…" Howard turned to join the guys heading out. "But I don't think it works like that."


	4. Chapter 4

4

At the Marshall Playhouse, Penny was placed in the back of the room twelve rows behind Mark Harmon and actor Dale Midkiff and busy pretending to be an audience-goer for a scene of the TV series about Navy investigators. Mostly trying to memorize her surroundings to find herself when the episode aired, she also showed up at the Spenser Mansion to play a wedding guest for an episode of "The Mentalist," but then Marcy discovered Penny had experience as a waitress, and the senior casting director gave her the non-speaking role as one of the caterers. All she had to do was walk past Simon Baker and Robin Tunney as they took hors d'oeuvres off her plate. It took about seven takes. She held it too high once, she stumbled once and then once she got it right, she had to do it exactly that same way for different camera angles, but she never once got to meet the actors. The important part was that she got on the extras list for Tandamount Studios, and had to watch her e-mail for days of shooting that came up that called upon extras. The rest of the time, she'd still be working as a waitress.

"Hey…" Leonard found Penny coming home from the Cheesecake Factory in her restaurant uniform. She was tiredly dragging herself up on the railing of the stairwell to the fourth floor. "I missed you the other night. I was wondering if you'd like to see a movie."

"A movie…" Penny had her purse over her right shoulder and was carrying her shoes in her left hand. "Sweetie, I'm just really tired. I've been working every day and working as an extra in the evenings. I just really need one night to relax and catch my breath."

"Okay," Leonard found his plans deflated. "How about if I bring us some take-out?"

"I already ate."

"I don't think I like dating an actress." Leonard commented.

"Sweetie…" She tiredly came up and kissed him. "I'm sorry… Not every night is going to be like this. I will be available for my boyfriend." She turned to unlock her apartment door.

"Can you call my your boyfriend again?" Leonard liked the sound of it.

"My boyfriend…" She mustered enough energy to grin at him. At that moment, her cell phone rang.

"Oh no…" She groaned. Sighing softly, her lips parting into a yawn, Penny checked her caller ID and read the letters TANDAM in big letters on her phone. That's how Tandamount Studios appeared on her tiny screen. Blinking a bit tiredly, she entered her apartment, tossed her purse on to her sofa and accepted the call before placing her phone to her ear.

"Hello?" She answered.

"Penny," It was Marcy. "How would you like to do a movie?"

Penny's eyes widened with a sudden new vigor, and she lifted her head at attention.

"I'm listening…" She answered.

"Tawni Hart had a scheduling conflict, and we got a sudden opening for an attractive blonde in a movie to start filming this month." Marcy was looking straight at Penny's black and white actress portrait. "We're in a scramble to hurriedly replace her. We're auditioning tomorrow at the Roosevelt; are you interested?'

Penny was still in shock.

"Yes." She somehow forced herself to chirp out a response.

"Perfect." Marcy placed Penny's photo and resume from one stack of portfolios to her potential stack. "Auditions start at nine in the morning. Good luck!"

Penny sat posed in her seat for a few seconds more after Marcy hung up. Calmly turning off her phone, she looked up to Leonard still a bit subdued and slowly broke a smile. Her feet were still hurting her.

"I got a movie!" She stood up slowly and screaming her head off. Lifting her arm to cheer, she started dancing and swaying her hips to party and celebrate her big break.

"Really?" Leonard watched her second wind. "What's it about?"

"I don't know."

"What are you playing?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what do you know?"

"They're rushing to replace an actress for a movie that is about to start shooting." Penny was shining. "You know, forget take-out. I'm taking you out to eat to celebrate!"

"I can do that…" Leonard grinned for her. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know." Penny realized she was still wearing her waitress uniform and went to change into something else. "Can I borrow twenty dollars from you?"


	5. Chapter 5

5

The Hollywood Roosevelt was famous for two things. Besides being a historic hotel, it was the site of the very first Academy Awards back in the Forties. Numerous celebrities had stayed here at one time or another. It was a five star hotel with numerous amenities, and numerous guests filled its halls through the year. The other thing it was famous for was the ghost stories. Many people believed it was haunted. The ghost of Marilyn Monroe could be seen sunbathing by the pool and checking out her reflection in one of the lobby mirrors. The spirit of Montgomery Clift rehearsed his scenes with a bugle outside his room on the Twelfth Floor, and the disembodied laughter of Errol Flynn still echoed in the ballroom. Guests and staff experienced both sounds of voices and footsteps, objects that moved by themselves and doors that closed themselves. When Penny arrived, her mind was not on ghosts or Marilyn's autograph. Entering the lobby, she noticed a placard listing a Soap Opera Convention in the ballroom, a police officer's convention in the Great Hall, the Cuoco 12th Anniversary Party in the restaurant and then Tandamount Studio Auditions in Suite Seven on the Fourth Floor. That was the one she wanted. Leonard escorted her for support.

"Scared?" He asked her in the elevator.

"Nope."

"Not at all?"

"These things are basically routine." Penny watched as the elevator opened on the fourth floor. She looked left then right up the immaculate hallway. The walls were a soft white, the carpet an emerald green; the corridor marked with chairs, sofas and hallway displays. "You go in, give an interview, do a reading… then go home and not get the part."

"How long do you think it will take." Leonard escorted her to the suite at the end of the hall.

"Oh, I guess there's about eight to ten…" She opened the door to the suite as several young blonde faces looked up.

"Hundred girls…" Penny commiserated. The room was packed! Girls were packed on the sofas, standing and leaning on walls, wandering around talking on phones or huddled in tiny communal groups. There was every variety of blonde hair in here. From platinum blonde to strawberry blonde, from bleach blonde to natural blonde, they ranged from skinny and cadaverous to shapely and curvaceous.

"Thank god, Howard isn't here." Leonard commented.

"Tell me about it…" Penny noticed Marcy come from the bedroom areas carrying a clipboard and checked in with her on the sign-up sheet. She would be seventy-eight of eighty-nine girls expected to show up to audition to replace television actress Tawni Hart in this low budget fright film. They had even started early with the early-comers. Eleven girls had had already been considered.

"Twelve…" Marcy called and Penny gestured Leonard to an empty footstool.

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to." She offered him a way out.

"No, I want to do this." Leonard commented. "Besides, I want to experience what you experience."

"Oh, that's so sweet…"

"Hi, Penny…" A shapely blonde in a tight blue sweater and blue jeans recognized her.

"Hi, Tricia…"

"Who's this?" Tricia was reading a paperback novel. "Your little brother?"

"No, this is my boyfriend." Penny answered as Leonard turned round to meet Penny's friend. He tried to shake her hand, but Tricia didn't commensurate.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously." Penny answered. "He's a physicist from Cal Tech."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Thirteen." Marcy called as another hopeful actress left believing she had the part. Hearing her number, Tricia hopped up.

"That's me!" Tricia grinned with a perky smile, hopped up with her curvy figure and lightly bounced after another audition.

"Break a leg." Penny watched her rival head into the bedrooms. "Bitch…."

This was a whole side of Penny that Leonard had never seen before. One of the girls who had been standing quickly grabbed Tricia's seat before the other two.

"Penny…" She turned covertly serious. "What have you heard about this role?"

"What have you heard?" She noticed Leonard and introduced them. "Oh, Ashley, Leonard; Leonard; Ashley…"

"Hi…" Ashley shook Leonard's hand then back to Penny. "I think it's based on a book or something."

"Any nudity?"

"Not that I heard."

Leonard listened to their conversation about so long and started playing Sudoku on his cell phone. After Tricia came out, he grabbed the chair in the room. Three to four girls had come and went by time he was on his next game. Penny had hopped around the room to talk and gossip with her friends. Only eight more girls came of the missing eleven showed up after her to audition. By lunchtime, the room was half empty. A few girls had even left after hearing of other auditions, and Marcy noticed it as she tried to call on girls.

"Seventy-Five?" She looked around the room of twelve girls and Leonard. "Going once, going twice… Seventy Six?" She looked around the room. "Seventy-Seven?"

"Bathroom!"

"Seventy-Eight?"

"That's me!" Penny jumped up and kissed Leonard for luck. Grinning hopefully, she took a deep breath and walked past several other blonde actresses. Leonard beamed toward her hopefully as Penny headed to the back room. Marcy closed the door behind her.

"Bitch…" Three girls chorused together. Leonard turned his head toward them.

Penny found herself in the inner suite outside the bedrooms on the corner of the hotel. Actor and director Moses Taylor was lying on the sofa and bouncing a ball against the wall. Peter Vincent was a former child star and the silver-haired veteran of several horror movies. As consultant to the film, he was first to meet Penny and say hello to her. Moses just turned his head and called a hello to her. Head casting director Mort Meyers had been working for the studio for twenty years. He was a big, jovial guy laughing at a joke Moses had said. At the bar, head writer Sandra Nesmith was the wife of Seventies TV icon, Jason Nesmith from the Science Fiction TV show, "Galaxy Quest."

"Penny," She looked tiredly up to her umpteenth blonde actress. "Like a daiquiri?"

"No, thank you…"

"Well, she passed the first test…" Mort offered Penny a chance to sit. Looking at Moses stretched across the sofa, he turned to the big chair before Peter got it.

"Penny…" Soft-spoken Peter spoke with a British accent. "You don't have very many credits on your resume. How about telling us a bit about yourself?"

"Oh, uh, well, I'm from Nebraska…" Penny started. "I was raised on a farm…"

"Ever drive a tractor?" Moses asked without looking up. He bounced his softball off the wall.

"I was eleven when I first disassembled and rebuilt my first Deerfield Ten-Eighty with a Double Turbine Engine." Penny commented. Moses caught his ball and looked up at her.

"I like her!" He was grinning.

"I first started acting in high school." Penny continued. "My dad kind of raised me like a boy. A lot of sports… My mom was the homebody type. I have three brothers and one sister, I came to California about five years ago…"

"Watch a lot of horror movies?" Sandra asked.

"Not really…" Penny tried to think. Sandra came around to sit across from her in the leather chair. "I do remember one about this guy staying the night in a big spooky mansion with a giant spider."

"Pete, that was one of yours, right?" Mort turned to Peter standing by the bar where Tracy kept notes n thee interview.

"Night At Webb Manor, 1993…." Peter recalled. "Not one of my best. I played Sidney Von Helsing, a vampire slayer in a haunted house movie without any vampires…. Dreadful script."

"Penny, as an actress, what kind of roles do you see yourself getting?" Mort asked. "Wait, let me guess… the same kind as Sandra Bullock and Reese Witherspoon?"

"Well, kind of…" Penny grinned with a quirky head bob. "I just want to act. I think I could do comedy, but I don't want to be known just for comedy. I want to be able to do as much as I can… Drama, comedy, maybe some action…"

"Character actor…." Moses was grinning and bobbing with his baldhead. "Yeah…. Would you like to read a scene?" He snapped his fingers for the script. Marcy handed it to him.

"The movie is based on an unpublished novella by horror writer William Collins; have you heard of him?" Peter asked.

"No, not really…"

"Not important…" Moses clapped his hands. "Okay, here's the scene…" He set it. "You're Lisa, one of five friends from Wisconsin heading to Florida and you've gotten trapped in this creepy little town in Arkansas where an unknown madman has successfully killed practically everyone in town. You and your friends have accidentally driven over and killed this nut job, but now, the only survivors in town believe there's a new worst killer is in their midst. You're locked up in a building with all doors locked from the inside, but he keeps getting in, or… it's one of your friends…" He turned to Mort. "You read this time."

"Okay…" Penny eyed the dialogue, camera references and notes on the page. Jostling her head to prepare herself, Mort smirked a bit amused to see how she prepared. He read the first line. "Oh my God, it's Hector!" He read flatly. "Someone killed him."

"Nick, please…" Penny played the role of the distraught girlfriend. "We've got to get out of this town! Let's just get in the car and drive away!" She sounded distraught. Peter looked at Moses grinning. Sandra scribbled some notes for Marcy.

"I can't, baby." Tall, forty-six year old Mort played the twenty-two year old boyfriend. "I can't leave Jesse behind; he's my brother. He could still be alive. Besides, this town needs me to help stop this guy."

"You're not going to stop him!" Penny played the role as if she were terrified. "You're going to get killed… just like Katie. Just like all the rest! Everyone dies in this stinking little town."

"He's just one man."

"One man…" Penny glanced and looked at the lines. "No one has ever been able to stop him! What makes you think you can do it?"

"Because I'm going to be a detective, like my dad…"

"You're going to be a dead detective…"

"Thanks, Penny…" Moses spoke up as Mort stopped from doing the scene. Peter gradually became distracted by the lunch table, and Sandra and Moses started talking together in hushed tones about Penny.

"So…" Penny felt she was just getting to steam in the scene. "When do I know if I get it?"

"We'll let you know." Mort looked at her and turned to Moses and Sandra. Tracy came over to show her out. What had started out promising had become lackluster. Penny felt deflated and her self-esteem drop as Marcy escorted her out.

"What did you think?" She asked.

"I think all you girls are great." Marcy answered. "Unfortunately, it's not my choice…" They headed back out to the outer parlor with the rest of the girls hoping for a part. Penny looked back fleetingly at what might have been as the production team talked and argued. She heard some of their words. One girl was too Southern, another had too much accent, another too California… Did they even know what they wanted? Once out of the room, she looked forward and noticed Leonard waiting for her. Howard and Bernadette had showed up to support her with Raj.

"Well?" Leonard was grinning.

"Nothing." Penny hugged him disheartened and depressed.

"I'm sorry, honey…." Bernadette rubbed her back. Howard even tried to support her by sharing her pain. Surrounded by all the beautiful blonde girls, Raj looked around distractedly and made a sound by taking a deep breath.

"Seventy-Seven?" Marcy looked at Bernadette.

"Me?"

"Yeah?"

"Okay, I'll give it a shot…" Bernadette kissed Howard and decided to give it a try. She headed back to try an imprompt audition for herself. Penny looked back at her in disbelief.

"Bitch…" The same three girls from before echoed.

Leonard, Howard, Raj and Penny looked at them.


	6. Chapter 6

6

"Food here?" Penny poked her head into the apartment.

"Amazing…" Sheldon looked up. "You know, if lost skiers smelled like Chinese food, I would bet you could find them in an avalanche."

"Bite me." Penny took her seat with the gang as Leonard gave her an egg roll.

"So, Penny…" Bernadette sat on the end of the sofa with Howard. "Any news on the part?"

"No…" She sighed a bit. "It's been five days… and they'll be shooting next week. I don't think I got it."

"You could still hear something, right?" Howard asked.

"No, I don't think so." Penny added more sweet and sour to her rice. "They wouldn't have me wait this long with the schedule they got." She paused to take a bite of her egg roll. "You know… I'm starting to think I should go back to Nebraska and work in my uncle's movie theater."

"What?!" Leonard reacted abruptly than lose her. "No! I mean… you don't want to do that…." He lowered his voice to sound more supportive. Everyone but Penny knew what he wanted. "Look…" He gazed back at Penny. "Your work as an extra is just taking off. You can't leave now. So you don't get this movie, you'll get the next." He and Penny shared a hopeful smile and a comforting kiss.

"And maybe after that performance you can get Leonard a part." Sheldon stoically commented. Raj had reacted to a sound in the hall and turned to whisper to Howard. His selective mutism kept him from talking before Penny or Bernadette, and it was worse around both of them.

"Penny, someone's at your apartment." Sheldon said it before Howard.

"I got it." She left her sweet and sour chicken with Leonard and headed around Raj to check it out. Opening the door to the guy's apartment, she noticed Jason at her apartment. He turned around upon glancing over and noticing her.

"Penny…" He looked as if he was just getting in. "This is for you." He handed her a large envelope.

"What is it?"

"It's the script I'm working on." He confessed. "I told Morty and Moses you were in my building, and that I'd drop it off; they want you back for a screen test."

Leonard and Howard heard Penny suddenly scream and wondered what was up. Raj leapt to his feet behind Bernadette, and Sheldon sighed at having his dinner interrupted. Wondering if Penny was being attacked, Leonard raced to the door and saw Penny grabbing and kissing Jason. Bernadette was shocked.

"What the hell?!" Leonard reacted jealously. It had just been a reflex action of gratitude. The script clutched to her chest, Penny started jumping up and down excitedly out of control.

"I got the job! I got the job!" She felt like a little kid.

"You got a call back!" Jason looked at her. "There's a big difference!"

"Leonard… oh…" Penny was grinning so hard her face was about to burst. "This is Jason; Jason, the guys… This is your script?"

"Yeah…" Jason started to head up then paused. "Oh, just so you know… that's just the main body of the movie. Moe doesn't want anyone knowing who the killer is going to be until just before shooting those scenes."

"So…" Sheldon faced Jason. "You're the new tenant?" He eyed Jason up and down very haughty. Jason looked back at him distantly unconcerned.

"Yeah…" He mumbled. "And you must be the whack job Leonard warned me about."

Sheldon looked back to Leonard.

"We met over laundry!" Leonard answered. "What do you think we talked about?"

"I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested!" He noticed Jason looking him up and down very curiously.

"You know…" Jason stared Sheldon down. "If you were a character on a TV show, I don't think anyone would believe it."


	7. Chapter 7

7

It was the first screen audition Penny had a chance to do since she had moved to California. Neither Ashley nor Tricia had made it this far, but it was down to Penny and seven other girls who had been asked to do screen auditions. Two days after getting the early draft of the shooting script, she had her appointment at Tandamount Studios near Pasadena. It was not as famous as say Paramount or the Warner Brothers Lot, nor did it have the television prestige of Mammoth Studios which produced numerous syndicated TV shows, but it had become notorious in the tabloids after high school student Maeby Funke wandered on to the lot in the late 1990s and faked a career as a movie production assistant for three years. Arriving on the lot, Penny was sent to wardrobe where Janice Heathrow, the wardrobe director for Taylor's film company, put her in costume for the character she was playing in the movie and then sent Penny to Stage 10 where she met Chip Sterling, one of the co-stars from the TV series "McKenzie Falls." During the show's hiatus, Chip did movies, and this was to be his first film beyond Condor Film Productions. Upon meeting him, Penny was immediately smitten by him. He looked a lot like Justin Bieber at an age where she could date him.

"So, what have you done before?" He was equally smitten by her.

"Oh, not much…" Penny and him sat in stage chairs and staff and crew created a set tableau to represent a scene from the movie. "Two commercials, three extra parts…" She refrained from exaggerating.

"No reason to be embarrassed…" Chip grinned to her. "You know, Tandamount has a reputation of using struggling actors and unknowns. I guess it saves them money; you won't get to be a star here, but you will earn your stripes."

"I'm getting that." Penny read her lines again.

"So, Penny…" Chip leaned closer to her. "You got a boyfriend."

"Oh, um, uh, yes…" She was briefly flustered by his big blue eyes and huge swatch of brown hair hanging over his eyes. "His name's Leonard. He just got back from the Arctic where he was looking for evidence of some sort of science thing."

"Wow…" Chip shined to her a bit let down. "That's impressive." They both heard clapping as Moses arrived. Formerly known as TV detective Frank Wrench, the bald actor and director arrived with Marcy, the assistant casting director, and Michael Yours, the movie's production designer. They took places in seats alongside the equipment amidst the cameramen, lighting guys and gaffers.

"Okay, Mouseketeers…" Moses looked to Chip and Penny. "This is where we try to make the magic. You are our Nick and Lisa, boyfriend and girlfriend. You know the classic story: two dumb teenagers stuck in a deserted town, unknown madmen picking everyone off, but no one knows who it is. You're tired, you're scared, we start shooting this in five days. Chip, give us the magic; Penny?"

"Yes?"

"Congratulations making it this far." Moses grinned at her. "Don't screw up…" He turned around mumbling as Penny and Chip jumped up to film the scene from the producers. "Why did Mel Gibson need to make his movie at the same time as mine? I liked Tawni for this movie…" He mumbled under breath as he took his seat by the camera. Chloe the script girl gave him his copy of the script. "Okay, Act Five, Scene Two…. and….Action!"

The guy with the slate clapped the title before the camera.

"Lisa, it's you! You're alive!" Chip became his character as Penny hugged him. "What happened? Where's Miss Rutgers?"

"I don't know!" Penny acted distraught. "I was feeling sick and nauseous, and suddenly something broke into the room. I never saw a thing! All I did was hear screaming. What happened?"

"Whoever it was killed her…" Chip turned away disturbed as if he had seen a murder. "Whoever it was…" He turned confused and sickened. "…Ripped her head from her body. She had bite marks on her… This killer… ate part of her."

Penny placed her hands to her mouth as if she were about to vomit.

"What are we dealing with here?" Penny revealed her talents as a dramatic actor. "Some kind of psychopath who thinks he's a vampire? An undead zombie sort of thing?" She turned Chip around as if she were in love with him. "Nick, baby… Forget this town. Get me out of here. Let's get to Florida like you promised!"

"I'm so…" Chip sounded as if he was forgetting his lines, but he was starting to improvise. "But I can't. If I deserted these people, and my father heard I did it, he'd never let me forget it. He's always saying I'm never following through, but now, I can be just as good a detective as him… I can stop this guy."

Penny's mind was racing to improvise him back into the script.

"What if I'm not lucky next time?" She played the character. "What if next time it's my body laying bloody and bludgeoned in a bathroom? Can you live with yourself if that happens?"

"That's not going to happen…" Chip caressed her face passionately. "I love you. I'd give my life for you." He pulled her close and kissed her. Penny pulled him tight as well upon feeling the energy of the characters. After a few seconds, Moses in the director's chair tilted his head at their scene both confused and amazed. Marcy, Michael and Leon the cameraman all also tilted their heads and wondering how the two were breathing in that embrace.

"Okay, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut…." He gasped for them as the two actors split up before him. "Whoa…" He tugged his assistant closer. "Call my girlfriend, tell her to come to my place in two hours and bring the black teddy…." He looked to his actors again. "Guys? Where the heck did that come from?"

"We felt the scene." Chip answered.

"Damn!" Moses turned round catching his breath. Behind him, Penny was trying to fan herself off with her script. "Okay, how about we shoot another scene without so much kissing in it." Taylor thumbed through the scenes. "Oh, let's try the scene where Lisa is…No that one…." He changed his mind and looked again. "Oh, how about the scene… uhhhh, no not that one." It had clues to the killer's identity. "Uhhhh…" He looked up to Chip. "Chip, how about you going and hitting the table from craft services… Penny, how about we film some scenes with you running, climbing and hiding?"

"Isn't that something for the stunt people?"

"Who said anything about stunt people?" Moses looked at her. Penny rolled her eyes, and looked up to Chip powerless to help her. Marcie guided her through the studio to a golf cart, and they rode across the grounds to the old cannery building on the lot. It was currently being used as the set for actress-entertainer Mikala's movie, "Night Girl," about the daughter of a museum curator who became a costumed crime fighter to solve her father's disappearance. The low-budget hero flick also starred up-and coming actor Joey Tribbiani and Zora Lancaster from the TV-Series, "So Random," but it was also going to double for the school in Goldfield, California where Moses was making his movie. The location was full of stairs, platforms, balconies, rafters and metal girders for climbing and scaling, and Penny felt as if she had to scale or climb all of it. Luckily, veteran stuntman Colt Seaver was on location to supervise the scenes. Penny did get to briefly meet Zora for a few minutes before she was taken into the cannery catacombs to tape running and screaming scenes. Moses was not convinced he had enough footage of her until it was after dark. Afterward, Marcy gave Penny a pass to eat for free in the studio commissary, and after getting her clothes back, she finally sat down to a dinner of baked fish and rice with soup and toast. Tired and aching a bit, she pulled her cell phone out and clicked Leonard's number.

"Die, die, die!" Leonard was playing "World of Warcraft" with the guys on their TV battling trolls when she called. "Hello, hey, Penny, could you wait a second?" He paused to toss a mystic fireball in the game to help Howard and Raj. The explosion leveled the battle scene and earned them points.

"I'm back." Leonard grinned and set aside his controller. "How did you screen test go?"

"We just finished." Penny ate her vegetable soup. "Uh, sweetie, something happened, and I kissed my co-star. That's not going to bother you now, is…"

"You kissed your co-star?" Leonard blurted out.

"Kiss?" Howard reacted. "Who got kissed?"

"Penny and her co-star…" Leonard revealed.

"Leonard…" Penny shook her head, spoke through her phone and dipped her toast in her soup as she talked. The commissary was full of actors, but no one famous and no one recognizable. "You did know as an actress I might have to do a love scene."

"Who is he?" Leonard asked. "What's he like?"

"He's nothing!" Penny now wished she hadn't called. "It meant nothing to me…"

"What's his name?" Leonard asked. "Is he better looking than me?"

"His name is Chip Sterling, and he's got a girlfriend." Penny was finishing her fish and rice. "Look, Leonard, you are my boyfriend now. I care about you. Please understand, this is just a movie…"

"Leonard," Sheldon spoke over Penny's call. "Could you please schedule your relationship spat with Penny for a better time where it doesn't interfere with my time. We are in the middle of a game!" He raised his eyebrows annoyingly.

"Leonard, " Penny heard Sheldon through the phone. "Can you tell Sheldon to mind his own beeswax?!" She paused tiredly and drank her tea. "Leonard, sweetie, look, I just wanted you to know the kiss meant nothing in case you heard about it later…"

"What does a pollen construct created from the honey collected by a species of hymenoptera have to do with…" Sheldon rambled.

"Penny, I don't think I like…" Leonard spoke over him.

"Jesus, Leonard, it was just a kiss!" Penny snapped. "Look, can we talk more about this when I get home? Okay…" She tried to be sorry.

"Okay…" Leonard felt conflicted. He just now had his first girlfriend, and now, her doing kissing scenes with other actors was bothering him. Should he make her give it up? If he did, she'd hate him. He didn't know what to do. "Guys," He looked to Howard, Raj, and Sheldon. "Have you ever heard of an actor named Chip Sterling?"

"Chip Sterling from "McKenzie Falls?" Raj knew the series starring Chad Dylan Cooper.

"Dude, you watch teenage soap operas?" Howard looked at Raj.

"I might have caught it a few times."

"What does he look like?" Leonard asked.

"Could we discuss this triviality at some other time?" Sheldon interjected. "May I remind you that we are right in the middle of a game to collect Five Stones of Power from the Castle of Endor, and Howard only has two hundred and thirty-six arrows to pull it off."

"Actually…" Raj and the guys ignored Sheldon. "I hear he's on Conan tonight to discuss his last movie if you want to see him."

"Great!"

"Now, wait a minute!" Sheldon sat and protested and the guys paused the game to switch back to their cable signal. "I am at the top of my game here! May I remind you that we have a standing schedule that we play video games every Friday night…."

"It's on…" Howard switched on TBS after looking up Conan O'Brien in the TV schedule.

"He's usually the second guest after the main guest…" Raj revealed.

"Leonard…" Sheldon tried to rationally coerce Leonard to get his way to restart the game. "Explain to me why you seeing this guy is far more important than…."

"Our first guest tonight is best known as the character of Wesley Crusher on the iconic TV series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation"…" Conan announced his first guest, and Sheldon turned his head quickly to the screen with flared nostrils, a look of annoyance and gritted teeth.

"He's just now finished a major motion picture, "Son of Lincoln," based on the life of Robert Todd Lincoln, the only surviving son of President Abraham Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Wil Wheaton!" Conan introduced Wil coming on his late-night talk show.

"Oh, Lord…" Sheldon glared at the TV screen. "It's Wil Wheaton… my old nemesis. At Hell's heart, I stab at thee….."

"Why do you always quote "Wrath Of Khan" around Wil Wheaton?" Howard asked. "You do know he wasn't in that, right?"

"Silence!"

"So what other projects you got coming up next?" Conan asked Wil.

"Well, I just met this writer from Tandamount Studios…" Wheaton talked to Conan. "He's got this idea for a series about these two geeky scientists who live across the hall from this hot blonde. …"

Leonard and Sheldon casually looked at each other. Howard scoffed at the idea, and Raj lowered his jaw excitedly.

"I might play one of them who's like this really crazy obsessive-compulsive antagonistic fellow who doesn't understand social relationships." He started grinning.

"Why would you play a guy like that?" Conan asked while chuckling.

"Because I know a guy exactly like that!" Wil looked out from the TV. "Are you out there, Sheldon? Can you hear me?" He started grinning. In the apartment, Sheldon looked horrified. His eyes were rounded in fear; his hands clenched in front of him were tensing up.

"Oh, Lord… no…."

"I could see Wilmer Valderama playing me." Raj lightly bobbed his head.

"That's what I was thinking!" Howard couldn't stop grinning. "Who do you think should play me? Topher Grace or Tobey McGuire?"


	8. Chapter 8

8

That evening, Leonard and Penny had their talk about the kiss, and ended up staying the night together. By morning, Leonard was more than willing to trust her even if his feelings told her not to trust her. Howard and Raj had ideas for the TV series Jason upstairs was developing on their characters. Raj wanted to be portrayed as worldly and surrounded by hot girls in a mansion with a grotto, and Howard wanted to be played as a wealthy engineer and contractor living at the top of a skyscraper with a wife played by Summer Glau. They didn't even make it into his apartment. Three minutes of pitching ideas at his door, Jason slammed the door on them than encourage them. It was also Penny's day off, and after getting her laundry started and five days of dirty dishes cleaned, she wanted to study the script of her movie a bit closer. Just who was Lisa? What was her past? Who was this mysterious cannibal killer who survived gun shots and tore people apart to feast on them? There had to be clues to the madman's identity in the script, and just where was that? She thought it was on her coffee table, but it wasn't. It wasn't in her bedroom or in her kitchen. She hadn't absent-mindedly placed it in her refrigerator or freezer either like her car keys. Last time she had it was last night when she was showing it to Leonard; where could he have left it? She went to go ask him.

"Guys, I'm in trouble." She walked in through the unlocked door. "I can't find…"

"No, you're wrong." Sheldon carried a manuscript. "Scene 18 clearly establishes the deputy as outside the school as Nick and Jesse are having their confrontation over whether they should try to escape."

"But if he couldn't have murdered Katie then he surely couldn't have murdered Miss Rutgers the nurse because he shows up last after her remains are found." Raj had another manuscript.

"Wait a second…" Leonard had another manuscript. He looked up at the dry erase board with the time-line then checked the board with a speculatory floor plan schematic of a school. "I'm lost. Did Horace the shopkeeper get murdered before or after they noticed Hector was disappearing before the murders?"

"Before…" Howard came over and showed Leonard the scene in the script. "Remember? Penny's script says that Horace was killed just after confessing that he used to catch Hector stealing cough medicine from his store. It's not until they go looking for him that they discover Hector's body in the janitor's closet with his head ripped off." They were trying to solve the ending of the movie with guesswork, flow charts and a timeline. They were treating it like a real murder case. They placed everyone at the time of each of the seventeen murders in the movie, established movement charts of the main characters as per the sequence of events and created and revised a theoretical blueprint schematic of the murder scenes to identify the location in a physical dimension.

"If Hector isn't the killer," Raj pointed out. "… Then who killed the nurse? Scene Five clearly establishes that the gymnasium between the two wings was locked and closed off so no one could pass through the school that easily."

"Maybe he came the long way around it." Leonard referred to the blueprint.

"Negative." Sheldon raised his eyebrows. "When Mr. Tucker of the city council was found dead at the base of the stairs in Scene 22, Nick mentions that he cut through the gymnasium with Oliver the deputy to get to the murder scene."

"Then someone had to have unlocked the gym." Raj realized.

"Oliver – he's the killer." Leonard thought he had it.

"No…" Sheldon disagreed. "We all agreed that in Scene 25 that Oliver had no opportunity to kill Teddy and Jimmy in the security room. It has to be one of these remaining five characters at the end of Scene 31." He tapped the dry erase board. "The brothers, Fred and George, Emily the housewife, Walt the traveling salesman or Mikey."

"Mikey's an eight-year-old boy." Howard pointed out.

"But how do we know that?"

"What are you guys doing?" Penny asked.

Upon seeing Penny, Raj's selective mutism took possession of him.

"We are trying to deduce the ending of your script based on the circumstances and criteria within the existing storyline." Sheldon noticed her.

"Okay…" Penny looked around their dry-erase boards of characters, floor plan schematics and timelines. "Uh… why?"

"Because not knowing is keeping me distracted from doing anything else." Sheldon answered.

"Here's your copy." Leonard handed her the missing script. "Sheldon ran off several copies of it."

"What?" Penny was slowly starting to realize that they could still surprise her.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute…" Howard checked the board. "How do we know Teddy and Jimmy were actually killed in Scene 25? Maybe they were killed much earlier in Scene 10 by Hector whose crack pipe was in the room after talking to Oliver on the walkie-talkies?"

"Interesting…" Sheldon checked his copy of Penny's script. "Uhhhh, no. The script says, "There was no blood on the crack pipe. He must have dropped it in the room after discovering the bodies and then run into the killer. Otherwise, blood would have gotten all over it from the event. The script says the victim's blood spattered everything in the room."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear.

"But if they didn't get killed in the order that they vanished, they we have to redo the timeline." Howard answered.

"Guys, what about this?" Leonard stood in his kitchen making tea. "Remember the Star Trek episode, "Wolf In The Fold." Maybe the movie is about an energy being that jumps in and out of bodies committing the murders. If that were the case, then everyone would be the killer at some point. Scene 4 says the murders were going on after almost fifty years."

The guys turned and stared at their notes and research from the script. Penny looked at them to the flow charts then back to the guys. She was tempted to return to her apartment, but they had her hooked. She wanted to know who the killer was going to be.

"Maybe it is the deputy." Sheldon wondered. "He was around back then."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear.

"Yeah, we can rule out Mikey the kid too." Howard spoke. "How safe are Fred, George, Emily and Walt?"

"I don't think it is Walt." Leonard commented. "Anyone who cracks jokes and risks his life to save the girls can't be a superhuman blood-drinking bone-breaking serial killer."

"Fred and George?"

"They were busy getting drunk and hammered through Scenes 16 to 25." Howard spoke. "Nick even says there was not a drip of blood on them."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear again.

"What kind of drunk psychopath would have time to change clothes before passing out?" Howard refuted his response.

"Emily the housewife was with Horace when Ronald was found murdered in Scene 7." Leonard tracked the alibis again. "There has to be another character in the background. We've eliminated all the suspects."

"No…" Sheldon once again responded as the expert for the movie. "What's the number one provision of the movie? Only thirty-two characters within a locked structure… Not thirty-three, and I'm pretty sure an invisible murdering energy being ala the classic Star Trek episode, "Wolf In The Fold," within a contained structure would constitute a thirty-third character."

"Maybe Luther comes back to life after Scene Three when Penny AKA Lisa and his friends run him over with their roadster." Howard was speculating. "He can slip back inside when Nick and Oliver return from the police station with the emergency kit."

"How does a seventy year old man with his back and neck broken in three places come back to life after being smacked into by an open 1975 Ford Roadster going sixty-five miles an hour through a nearly deserted city?" Sheldon looked at him.

"Healing factor?"

"Oh!" Penny tried to figure it out. She wanted to prove she could be smart. "Maybe its one of these five!"

"That's you and your friends." Leonard told her. They were the opening characters heading to Fort Walton Beach in Florida who got lost in Crutcher, Arkansas at the top of the movie.

"Oh, yeah…." Penny looked back. "I'm playing Lisa…." She silently nodded her head. "This is going to be one good movie!"


	9. Chapter 9

9

A day passed and no news. Movie part or not, Penny still had to pay the bills, and it was off to work at the Cheesecake Factory waiting in tables, taking orders, meeting interesting people and hearing every third grandmother say she was perfect for her grandson. She was just glad this was a family restaurant or else she'd have to deal with rowdy reprobates grabbing and pinching her. The only fun part of the day was when the guys came by to get dinner and she could relax.

"Hey, guys…" She brought the guys drinks when she came to get their orders.

"Did you hear about the movie yet?" Leonard sat across from Sheldon and next to Raj.

"Not, yet… but that's okay…" Penny started filling out her order pad. "After reading the script, I was thinking: "Do I really want to star in a horror movie and get splattered with fake blood?" I mean… if I can get this one, I can get another one."

"That's not very logical." Sheldon looked up. "That's like saying if Howard gives up one NASA contract that he can just get the next one that comes along."

Howard looked up at Sheldon stunned and appalled.

"What the hell?"

"Rational logic dictates that a sequence of events with similar events and outcomes will remain the same but by introducing a new variable to that sequence will set off a consequential sequence of events unlike the first." Sheldon added.

"And yet you can't figure out that if I spit in your food once that I just might do it again." Penny shot a look at him. Sheldon bounced his gaze off her, toward Leonard and back to Penny.

"Leonard, explain to me again why you are trying to instigate a monogamous relationship with this person?" Sheldon looked to his best friend.

"If you can't figure that out I'm not explaining it to you." Leonard looked to him just as annoyed as Penny. He looked the menu over and back to Penny. "Can I get the Chef Salad – no cheese…"

"Chef Salad for my lactose intolerant boyfriend…" Penny took his order. Raj whispered to Leonard.

"…Oh, and Raj will take the Turkey Swiss Sandwich with Onion Rings…" Leonard announced his order as Penny wrote it down.

"Turkey for the Little Mute Hindu Boy…" Penny teased good-naturedly.

Raj reacted confused and wondered if he was being insulted.

"Ham and Swiss for me with Potato Salad on the side…" Howard ordered one of his regular sandwiches.

"One Not-So-Kosher for Mr. Hebrew…." Penny jotted down his order. She looked to Sheldon. "What are you getting, Senior Psychopath?"

"Don't I always get the Double Bacon Cheeseburger?" He announced after a brief annoyed stare.

"Yes, but I just dared to dream today you might actually deviate to something from this planet." Penny took his order. "One Giant Cork for the Mouth that Roared with a Double Helping of Spit…" She was in really good spirits today. She turned to put their order in at the kitchen window. Sheldon gasped annoyingly at her blatant disrespect and callous disregard to his ego and inflated personality.

"Honestly, Leonard…" Sheldon sighed. "You could do so much better."

"You know, you're right…." Howard quickly interjected. "Leonard could find a much better roommate than the one he has!" Sheldon shot an annoyed look at him. Leonard was grinning as he sipped his tea, and Raj was giggling silently. In the prep area, Penny stopped to catch her breath as Bernadette refilled the tea fountain. She had been on her feet for three hours straight, she had just finishing dealing with a family party of eleven and she was still waiting on another order. Taking a five-minute break, she sat down at the table in the employee break area and sat with her head in her hands. A deep breath came up from her body. A few feet away, she heard a cell phone vibrate in one of the purses on the shelves used by the waitresses. It sounded as if it was coming from hers. Another deep breath, and she stretched her arms out and pulled her purse down from up above. It was her cell phone. The caller ID read TANDAM. Her breath tensed up, her chest felt heavy, and her head became warm as she nervously took the call.

"Hello?"

"Penny, it's Mort… Mort Meyers, the casting director…" The tall robust figure was in the hall between Studio 15 and Studio 17 for the TV Pilot, "Witches Of Weatherby Place" at Tandamount Studios. "Are you sitting down?"

"I am now…" Penny sat down.

"Baby, you got the job!" Mort announced. "The producer loved you! He said anyone who did all those crazy running and screaming scenes we did with you who could come out with good spirits deserved a chance."

"I got it?" Penny was stunned. It hadn't hit her yet.

"We're starting immediately." Mort stopped to sign something Marcy handed him. "You need to get your affairs ready by tonight. I'm sending a shuttle van to pick you up tomorrow morning at seven in the morning to take you to where we're shooting. You're going to be gone for five weeks; we got your room and board covered. Can you be ready that fast?"

"Uh, uh, I, uh, yeah, sure…" It was all happening so fast!

"Great! Congratulations, I know you'll do great!" Mort turned off his phone and turned to Marcy. "Marcy, call the other girls for me and give them the bad news."

"Great…."

Back at the Cheesecake Factory, Penny slowly dropped her phone in her purse and dropped back onto her seat. It felt weird. She thought if she got a movie role that things would feel different, but they didn't. They felt the same.

"Wow…" She gasped.

"Penny…" Denise was one of the other waitresses. "Your order's up!"

"Thanks, Denise…" Penny was moving on sole instinct now. She moved to the window and took a platter to take the order for Table Six. It was two older ladies near the front entry. They were good tippers. One had the Chef Salad; the other had the Seafood Salad. Heading past the guys at the table debating Christopher Reeve as Superman over Dean Cain as Superman, she also brought the refilled pitcher of tea to renew the ladies' drinks. Upon delivering their meals and checking on them, she stopped by the guys' table to refill their drinks as well.

"Leonard…" Penny's voice was soft and petite. "I just got the call. I got the job."

"What?" Leonard looked around briefly confused. "You mean, the movie?"

"I just got the call…"

Except for Sheldon, all the guys cheered for her, and Leonard jumped up to congratulate her. A few restaurant patrons turned to take notice. Remaining aloof, Sheldon wasn't sure how to respond. It wasn't like getting an acting job measured up to proving string theory or breaking the fundamental fourth wall of physics or the Unified Field Theory, but it somehow meant a great deal to Penny. She and Leonard hugged and kissed, and then Howard hugged her and didn't get a kiss. Raj backed away nervously, but Penny hugged him anyway. Sheldon flinched as Penny tried to hug him.

"What happened?" Bernadette broke from her job to come see the commotion.

"Penny got the movie!" Leonard announced.

"Oh, please," Sheldon reacted unaware of the big deal. "It doesn't even star Patrick Stewart or William Shatner. It's not like she won the Nobel Peace prize."

"And I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow…" Penny made a movie reference even the guys should have known then turned to Leonard. "Leonard, I'm going to be gone for five weeks!"

"Five weeks?" Leonard heard her. "Where's it filming? Mars?"

"Leonard, don't be ridiculous." Sheldon puffed up for another scientific rant. "Five weeks is not nearly enough to reach Mars even if Penny could get there. Providing she had the necessary life support system to survive on its surface, a trip to Mars would take…"

"Congratulations!" Howard interrupted by trying to hug Penny again.

"Five weeks?" Leonard was already missing her. "What am I…" He paused. "No, wait…. If you can wait an entire summer for me, I can wait a few weeks."

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning at seven." Penny looked at him. "Would you be there when I leave?"

"Seven in the morning?" Leonard quickly realized how early that was then recanted. "Yeah, I can be there." Leonard hugged her again. The movie was filming over a hundred and forty miles east of Los Angeles in Goldfield, California, a small former mining town in the desert on Highway 62 near Hitchcock and Fairvale. Since the local economy there had collapsed, it was only down to around five hundred retired people still living there. Teenagers who had been raised there left to raise families elsewhere. The post office was in the sheriff's office, and without anyone under twenty in town, the high school had closed down to be used as a recreation center. Tandamount Studios was going to pay the town over a million dollars for the use of the town and the high school for their movie shoot. The money was more than enough to restore and reopen the local park and recover main street. With enough money left over, they could rebuild the bridge from the interstate to traffic again. The town council also knew one movie here might lead to others. Staying the night with Penny, Leonard promised to get her mail and watch her apartment. Her boss at the Cheesecake Factory had previously employed actresses before and promised to keep her job open for her return. There wasn't much else for Penny to cover except pack her bags for the movie shoot. When she woke, the sun was almost straight up with the light peeking over the buildings and horizon across the street. The morning commute was terrible, and she worried she'd miss her ride. Leonard's watch said 7:08.

"It looks like it's running late." He and Penny waited in the air-conditioned lobby and watched out the front glass doors.

"It's coming…" Penny waited a bit scared.

"This could mean big things for your career."

"One movie does not a career make." Penny quoted. "Zora told me that."

"Who?"

"Zora… Zora Lancaster… She stars on the TV show, "So Random."" Penny mentioned.

Leonard was not aware of any show that was not on the SyFy Channel.

"It's a TV show on Disney Channel."

"Oh…" Leonard nodded his head. "Well, maybe Raj has seen it."

"I'm going to be away shooting a movie for five weeks in Goldfield, California." She looked at Leonard. "Going to miss me?"

"Yeah…" Leonard stared into her eyes and held her waist. "Maybe I'll come visit you."

"It's possibly going to be a closed set." Penny stood waiting for her ride. Leonard looked up past the light and saw a white and blue van with a covered luggage rack on top coming closer and closer. He saw it turn its brake lights on and slow down out front. Penny had turned around to see it by now as it stopped out front. It had silver hubcaps and the white letters on the blue lower half of the painted SUV read "Tandamount Shuttle Buses." It was a side business of the studio. Greg Sawyer, the driver, popped out from the driver's seat, closed his door behind him and hustled inside out of the heat.

"Penny Parker?"

"Yes."

"Your bags?"

"Right here."

Greg quickly grabbed them and carried them both out at the same time to toss up on top of the van and secure down tightly with the tarp. There were a few other travel cases. The shadows of two more people moved behind the tinted windows of the van.

"I guess this it." Penny turned to Leonard one last time.

"Yeah…" Leonard grinned excitedly for her. "Leaving Penny Parker, waitress… returning Penny Parker, movie star!"

Penny giggled and looked Leonard over once more, before grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him tight, her lips meeting his, his hands grasping her waist and holding it tightly. The two actresses in the van and the one actor cupped their hands over the glass inside the vehicle to watch the two in their romantic interlude. Greg secured Penny's two bags and tied the tarp down to protect them from sand and weather. He hopped down off the back bumper and slid the side door open. The redhead and the blonde stuck their heads in the opening to look out. The lone guy inside watched sideways as Penny looked at him.

"Time to go…" Penny stopped kissing Leonard to gasp for air.

"I was afraid of that."

"Wait for me…" Penny whispered in his ear.

"That's about all I can do…" Leonard looked into her blue eyes. Penny kissed him one last time on his lips, and watched her reflection pull back from him in his glasses. The van was ready. The engine was idling. Penny Parker was leaving to become an actress in a movie. Leonard watched as she turned out the doors and thanked Greg for getting her bags. One leg in the van, she pulled herself in by the strap inside and met her co-stars. As the driver, Greg swung the fussy door shut hard then raced around to the driver's seat to get on the road ahead of the traffic. Watching from the air conditioning lobby, Leonard felt his body tremble and his chest draw heavy. A tear dropped from his left eye as the van started from the curb.

He forgot to give her the gift!

When he had left for the Arctic, she had given him a blanket with sleeves to help him stay warm. For the desert heat, he had considered sunglasses with a flip down tinted visor for added protection then chose the girl scout compass so that she could find West on it and know from which direction he was waiting for her. He wasn't sure if she'd understand it, but he wanted her to have it. He bolted from the lobby and ran for the van lightly traveling down the street. He thought he might catch it when it stopped at the light, but the light double-crossed him and changed sooner than he expected. He called for her again and again. Why didn't she look out and see him? Did she forget him already for her new friends? Leonard dashed through the crosswalk at the end of the block as the Silver Nissan swerved to miss him. Somewhere in the van, a shadow moved and someone looked out to Leonard chasing the van. Chasing the van, Leonard started losing his breath. It had reached the boulevard. Penny's face looked out to see Leonard chasing after her waving the little box just before he groaned to a stop at the light pole. Her hand braced against the glass. A tractor-trailer blocked their view of each other, and they lost sight of each other for five weeks…


	10. Chapter 10

10

It was after dark when the same van that had taken her to Goldfield, California returned with her to Pasadena, only now it had a muddy underside from the rain, one replaced tire after the old one was accidentally shot in a scene by a rifle and the interior was littered with junk food wrappers and plastic water bottles. Greg took down Penny's two bags and took them in the building for her.

"Thanks, Greg…"

"Don't mention it." He had offered to carry them up to her floor. At first, she politely refused to have him do it, but he insisted. A former stuntman until a bad fall busted his shoulder, Greg was built like a football quarterback and wanted to help her. "Oh, you promised you give Phyllis your number."

"Oh, yeah…" Penny unlocked her door, walked in and found her apartment exactly as she had left it. She found a post-it and scribbled her cell phone number on it. "Here's my phone number for your wife…" Penny gave her number to Greg. His wife, Phyllis, was one of the caterers for the movie. "Tell her that she can stay with me anytime she wants; it's the least I can do for doing my laundry for me."

"Trust me, I know…" Greg looked at her as if she was his sister. "Fake blood is so hard to wash out…"

"Tell me about it…" She took a bottle of cold water from her refrigerator to replenish her fluids and tossed one to Greg to grab out of the air. She was a little tanner, a little more thin, but she was finally home after staying in a bed and breakfast with five of her female co-stars. One of them was Annaleise Van Der Poole, a former Disney Channel actress, while another was Rebecca Constance, a former child star trying to get back into the business. Playing Oliver the Deputy had been Dick Roberts, another former child star, but the rest of the cast were relative unknowns. Out of all of them, Penny had met and befriended Mindy Masterson, the granddaughter of Sixties Western star Dash Riprock, a retired Hollywood celebrity with over three hundred pictures in his career. Mindy had been playing her younger sister, Katie, in the movie.

"I better get going…" Greg thanked her for the water.

Penny gestured him goodbye as she continued drinking. When she stopped, the bottle was three-quarters empty. All she cared about was that she was finally home. She was just so tired! No more screaming. No more running. No more pretending to be afraid of hidden killers and no more shivery cold nights locked up in a jail cell running lines. She had taped the scene falling down the stairs and sliding through colored corn syrup almost fifty times. The stuff was everywhere. By the end, everything was covered in it, and then she had to get cleaned up for fake friend stills and promotional images. To confuse the audience, eight members of the cast including herself had to pose in promotional photos while drenched in fake blood while holding an axe and a fake severed head. Greg stepped out of her apartment just as Leonard and the guys came down from the roof after photographing constellations. He had the tripod and film, Howard had the cameras and Raj had the computer positioning system. Sheldon once more announced he was the group manager to order the guys around and antagonize them into threatening to toss him off the roof.

"Thanks for the phone number…" Stopping before them, Greg looked back before heading down the stairs. Leonard reacted jealously from that statement.

"What?!" He did a double take.

"Penny's back." Sheldon replied.

"I know she's back!"

"Anytime…" Penny leaned out through her door. "Leonard?! I missed you so much!" She reached to kiss him.

"Apparently, not all that much!" Leonard reacted and gestured with green-eyed worry. "Who's Greg?"

"Nobody…" Penny tried to convince him. "I gave him my phone number to give to his wife. She loaned me some of her clothes."

Raj whispered in Howard's ear.

"What happened to your clothes?" Howard relayed the question.

"Nothing!" Penny was not ready for the third degree when all she wanted was to get together with Leonard again. "Leonard, I missed you so much! I told everyone on the movie set that you were one of the smartest men I knew!" She kissed him.

"Leonard?!" Sheldon scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Penny… You didn't need to lie to them to build Leonard up. You could have told him about your other friends."

"I did…" Penny declared. "I told them about Howard and Raj too…"

Howard and Raj grinned, but Sheldon realized when he'd been insulted and turned to enter his apartment.

"I'm kidding! Sheldon…" Penny took him by the arm to stop him. "I told them about you too."

"Oh…" Sheldon's ego puffed back up to pressure. "You told them about how I was the most brilliantly gifted mind on the planet?"

"O – kay…" Penny was just glad he couldn't understand sarcasm or subterfuge. She turned back to Leonard, Raj and Howard. "Mostly I just told them how crazy he was…" She whispered with a slight nod, but Sheldon must have heard her anyway because he looked away emotionally deflated.

"Penny, I missed you so much…" Leonard wanted to be with her again. "These last few weeks have been just hell. Maybe we could…" He grinned wanting to get back you being intimate with her.

"Not tonight, sweetie…." Penny yawned tiredly. "I just want to sleep tonight, but I promise, tomorrow we'll do something spectacular…"

"But you haven't told us about the movie?" Howard wanted details. "Were there any famous people in it? What did you do? Who did you meet? Were there any nude scenes?"

Both Penny and Leonard looked at him disgusted.

"There is only one question Penny is answering before we all leave her alone…" Sheldon raised his voice to take charge of the occasion much like every other moment in his life he seized from other people when he wasn't the source of attention. "Penny…" He looked into her tired blue eyes. "Who was the killer?"

The guys waited with baited breath to finally get the answer they wanted.

"I'm sorry, guys." She tiredly yawned. "But my contract has a silence waver. I can't discuss the ending with anyone."

"But we'll never tell." Sheldon had to know. "Was it Oliver the Deputy or Emily the Housewife?"

"A middle-aged woman ripping someone's head off with her bare hands?" Howard questioned his logic.

"I'm sorry, Sheldon…" Penny tiredly unlocked her door. "I can't."

"Blink once for Oliver or twice for Emily!"

"Sheldon…" Penny yawned as she opened her door while dragging her suitcase behind her. "You'll just have to wait till next year for when it appears on Cable."

"Straight to Cable?" Leonard asked.

"Yeah…" She pressed through to her apartment.

"But I can't wait that long!" Sheldon had to know the ending. "Who killed all those people?"

"Good night, Sheldon!" Penny closed her door behind her and locked it. Sheldon was rapping on her door trying to learn the identity of the Goldfield Killer, but Penny was sure she could sleep through the noise. He couldn't keep pounding for that long. Leaving her suitcases by the door, she yawned tiredly, turned her lights off and wandered right to her bedroom. The air in the apartment was kind of dead, a bit dusty, but she cracked the window in her room to deal with it and then dropped herself in her clothes on to her bed to sleep. She'd wake and change clothes later. As her tired mind drifted away, she found herself back in the old Goldfield High School gymnasium, the last scene of the movie, but because she had learned to ignore the cameras, they didn't appear in her dream. She was not just in the movie once more; she was once again reliving the role. She was Lisa the heroine again, but instead of her cast mates, the guys somehow got cast in the movie roles. She was simultaneously through the looking glass and down the proverbial rabbit hole. Leonard was Nick her boyfriend and Raj was Jesse, his brother with the criminal record. Howard played Oliver the Deputy with a tiny tin star to his chest while Sheldon was somehow cast in drag and long dress and all as Emily the widowed housewife. It was Scene Forty-Two where the paranoia had reached a fevered pitch and the accusations had run out. Everyone else was dead except for the brothers, Fred and George, who had stolen Nick's car to leave town with Mikey to rescue him. The killer was one of the last five survivors in the gym.

"I ain't going down to be plugged off like my husband was." In Penny's dream, Sheldon played Emily the fifty-year old housewife in this hallucinated farce. Despite how ridiculous he looked in a dress, he held his shotgun on the others and backed toward the gym locker rooms.

"Emily…" Howard tried to stop her. "You're not being rational!"

"I'm rational enough." Sheldon threatened to shoot the others. "This town was picked off one by one over fifty years by four killers, and I'm ending it here. The body count stops here. My husband will be avenged."

"How do we know you're not the killer?" Leonard asked.

"Because like you both said…." Sheldon backed up. "Only a man would be strong enough to kill all those people." He fired once to warn them then jumped through the doors and stuck a wooden broom handle through the door handles to stop them. As Leonard, Raj and Howard moved to break through, Sheldon headed into the old coach's office and broke the pipe to the gas heater then turned the microwave oven on for two minutes to give himself enough time to get out before it set off the gas, but in his haste, he hit an extra button, making it twenty minutes. A hot microwave and a loose gas pipe should surely blow up the school with everyone in it after he was gone. Running out into the hall, he chained the outside doors into the gym hall as an added precaution.

"Emily, come back!" Howard, Raj and Leonard pounded at the doors to the locker room to get through, but they wouldn't open.

"Why don't the other gym doors open?" Penny screamed.

"We wielded them shut in 1989 to fortify the school against the killer!" Howard revealed to her.

"What good was that?" Raj yelled. "He still picked everyone off!"

"What are we missing here?" Leonard and Penny huddled together as Raj and Howard stood apart from each other. Who was the killer? Who did it? Someone here had killed seventeen people over one night; someone strong enough to break arms and get away with almost twenty-five bullets in them… someone practically superhuman like that guy with the hockey mask at the summer camp in the Northeast. "What are we missing?!"

"It has to be one of you three." Deputy Howard looked at them. "Every new killer had been corrupted by the one before them; Luther by Damien, Damien by either Alice or Daniel… all the way back to Terence in 1953."

"How do we know you weren't corrupted by Luther?" Raj backed away from Leonard and Howard.

"Because each new killer was at the death scene of the previous killer." Leonard's analytical mind recalled the years of police files. "We were in the car when we hit Luther!"

"It's one of you three!" Howard realized. "You're the only ones we never cleared!"

"Jesse!" Penny screamed at Raj. "You've got the criminal record!"

"No!" Raj refused to be branded because of something from his past. "Denise McAllister was an accident! It always was! I loved her!" He smelled the gas entering the gym and started hitting the doors to break through. The broom handle on the outside wouldn't budge. "And besides, I was with you guys when Ron, Horace and Hector were killed! I never killed anyone!"

"Wait a second…" Howard had a revelation while trying to finger the broom out of the way through the opening in the doors. "Lisa was alone with Miss Rutgers when she was killed. She was missing when Clayton and Ron were killed."

"I was hiding!"

"Katie and Hector were killed in the back hallway!" Leonard protected her. "She couldn't have got past anyone while we were on guard in the main hall."

"She cut through the gym." Raj briefly stopped trying to pound through the door to side with Howard. "You found them open after Mr. Tucker was murdered!"

"And how would she have gotten to him?"

"The back stairs." Howard and Leonard were putting it all together. "She slipped up, took the bite out of his neck before decapitating him and then tossed his body off the top balcony before slipping back down the back way to be with us when we found him." They turned from pounding and glanced at her looking innocent. "She was also behind us when we left Teddy and Jimmy in security. She ripped them apart right under our noses then rushed to catch up with us."

"Lisa couldn't have killed two guys all by herself." Leonard refused to believe it. "She can barely run with the cast on her…" He looked to her broken leg. The cast on her left leg wasn't there. Her pants leg was still ripped to accompany it, but her leg was bare and uncovered underneath. She looked up to him embarrassingly.

"Lisa?" He looked at her. Penny leaned her head left and cracked her neck muscles dementedly. She sighed under breath as Howard and Raj pounded their shoulders to the doors. Refusing to belief it, Leonard backed from his girlfriend. As her character, Penny had murdered and ripped apart over seventeen people?

"It was just so much fun to see each of you breaking down and going nuts trying to guess who was doing it." She grinned and surrendered to her dark site. "And the whole time, it was me… with these two hands… and no one ever thought the blood on me might be from someone else…"

"No, Lisa…" Leonard felt his heart being crushed. "Not you…" Working together, Howard and Raj finally smashed through the broom in the doors to the locker room and discovered the doors to the corridor chained from the outside. Sheldon had locked them in his selfish escape. It suddenly made sense. When Luther ran out in front of their car, he was trying to kill himself to stop the killings, but something… the infection that had affected him this past year had been passed on to Penny. His blood had splashed on to her in the accident; it had got into her mouth and had changed her, forcing her to embrace her dark side.

"Imagine to my surprise to discover I was getting stronger and faster…" Penny played the character of Lisa, a heroine who also turned out the main antagonist. "I was suddenly doing things no one else could do…"

Gas was still filling the school locker room. No one noticed or heard the microwave running unattended.

"So what if I had to kill a few people…." She smiled happily content. "It was such a rush. A rush I couldn't stop."

"You could fight it." Leonard tried to appeal to her. "Luther tried to fight it!"

"Now, why would I want to do that?" She grinned psychotically. "You should have guessed the truth when I said I'd do anything to get out of this town. Imagine how powerful I could get let loose in a city without anyone knowing what I was doing?" She rushed Leonard and tried to pin him down, but as Nick's brother, Jesse, Raj came to the rescue and pummeled her to the ground. His body landed on her trying to hit her, but she caught his arm and held it. She was strong. Too strong, she cracked his right arm backward as she slammed him to the wall. Leonard jumped on Penny's back and she elbowed him to the chest, knocking him to his back. Whatever was in her made her unstoppable. Whatever it was made her possessed. She reared her mouth open and tried taking a bite out of Raj's shoulder. Howard slid a football trophy across to use as a weapon. Raj grabbed it in his left hand and pushed it down her throat.

An unearthly shrill scream filled the gym and resonated off the dusty basketball goals and overhead rafters. It sounded as if the dead were rising from their graves. Leonard grabbed Raj and pulled him into the boy's locker room outside the gym. Penny rolled on to her back and pulled the gold-plated lead weight out of her gullet. Her eyes flared as they slammed the doors against her. Howard pushed another broom handle through the doors; this one had a steel handle. He watched Leonard and Raj fighting with the chained doors to the corridor.

"Pulls the pins out of the hinges!" He yelled. Overcome by some vampiric lust for fresh blood, Penny pounded the steel doors keeping her from her boyfriend and his friends.

"That's not going to hold her for long!" Raj held his broken arm under his left.

"Nicky!" Penny pounded at the doors. Her eyes were glowing red. "I promise I'll kill you last!" She hit the doors hard and the hinges bent as cracks split through the masonry. Howard saw the doors bending at her pounding. The cracks were growing deeper and longer.

"Holy crap!" He watched the damage she was doing. Her psychotic screaming drowned out the pounding they were doing at the hinges. She was determined to get to them. She was going to leave them like all the others, bludgeoned, ripped apart and barely recognizable as human beings - just bloody masses of bones and tissue just to sustain her bloody addiction to slaughter. He saw her demonic visage in the windows of the door peeking through at her. She smashed through one of the windows trying to reach the broom barring her, but she couldn't reach it. She pounded her shoulder into the steel doors again. Between the pounding, Howard and Raj heard another noise beyond her pounding and psychotic screaming. They heard ripping fabric. Why was she getting taller? Penny had to bow down a bit to see through the door where the broom was she was trying to reach. Was she forcing herself into a level more powerful than those before her?

"Holy crap!" Raj watched her head slowly rising up out of the range of the windows.

"Holy crap!" Howard and Leonard watched what used to be a t-shirt on Penny turn into a very small tank top. The smell of gas was getting worse. They popped the pin on the bottom hinge, and pulled the door out to make their escape, but it wouldn't pull free the rest of the way. The metal arm across the door wouldn't let it come any more. Leonard crawled under it first, and Raj looked back just as a huge arm finally pounded the door behind them, and a huge hand five feet across grabbed Howard by the leg. She had to be gigantic! Hitting the floor hard, Howard was dragged back into the gym to find Penny waiting for him. Her height exceeded his worst nightmares. Her head was against the steel rafters as her hand lifted him more then twenty feet off the orange paneled floor, held him over her open maw of a mouth then dropped him into her gullet in less than a minute. Their escape close, Leonard began pulling Raj by his one good arm under the door. Penny's telephone pole-sized fingers next grabbed at his right leg and started pulling him and Leonard back through to her beyond the locker room and into the gym. Raj kicked at her and felt his leg come out of its socket. He was the rope between Leonard and the giant female psychopath. Leonard had his feet trying to pull Raj to safety and the whole time the smell of gas was still filling the school. The microwave was getting hotter and hotter.

The damage to the inner doors of the locker room came down, and several cinderblocks came down on Penny's wrist. Forced to let go of Raj, she realized how much the gym had come around to enclose her as her raging metabolism had forced her to take up more space. She wasn't sure how big she'd become, she just knew she needed to feed, and there was only one thing she wanted, human flesh, a lot of it, and there was one last way to get it. Her face contorted into a psychotic grimace, she reared her arm back to smash through the wall just as the gas in the school filled enough of the school, permeated the microwave and hit an active spark of electricity.

The explosion drove Penny out into the real world. She woke up again to a pitch-black apartment. Her alarm clock said it was after midnight. Filming that scene had involved latex, red eye contacts, latex balloons in her clothes that were inflated and then a miniature version of the gymnasium set at one twentieth the actual size and the whole time she had to act like a cross between Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" and her worst nightmare while shooting thirteen shots of a close-up of herself chewing up and swallowing a tiny figure of the deputy made out of chicken and turkey. Vowing to never again do another low-budget horror movie, she sighed and turned on her side in bed.

"How the hell am I going to keep the guys from seeing this movie…." She asked herself.

END


End file.
